1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony, including Internet protocol network telephony (IPNT), and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for collecting, aggregating and exploiting information derived by tracking behavior of persons visiting Web pages, and pre-stored information regarding the same persons.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the art of telephony, call centers exist for the purpose of processing transactions and general servicing of customer's needs. Modern call centers often use proactive methods to reach out to persons who may be potential customers in order to anticipate needs of such persons and to illicit engagement of those persons in transaction and or service-based processes hosted by the call center.
Methods known to the inventors for initiating proactive contact include proactive telephone contact based on some information already known about the person. For example, a person may click on a product description to learn more about a product advertised on a Web page. When the call center learns of this action by the person, an automated offer may be delivered to that person (typically a pop-up message) that asks the person if they would like to chat with an agent, receive a call, or be redirected to an order page, for example.
One important factor in such outbound proactive campaigns is the richness of information that can be obtained about the person. Such information types may include Web page navigation activities and results of searches performed through a search engine accessible through the Web page being monitored. Several challenges exist with respect to making proactive contact more efficient and therefore more successful relative to the ratio of contact to closing of transaction processes.
A limitation that is persistent in call center data aggregation is that when a potential customer becomes a proactive target, generally only a very limited picture of that customer's behavioral profile and preference profile exists in the knowledge banks of a call center system. For example, a customer might be interested in a specific product as evidenced by the customer clicking on the product description. This activity may be sufficient to launch a proactive contact attempt that fails because the customer was recently unemployed and cannot purchase the product.
There are existing Web monitoring that gather and store data about Web visitors for purposes including proactive contact. One problem with these systems is that they typically aggregate information rather than store it on an individual basis. Another problem is that the information most often is not available in real-time. Moreover, existing proactive engagement systems monitor individual visitors and respond in real-time, however, the only channel offered is Web chat and information about the individual visitors is not maintained after contact, so all knowledge of the Web visit is lost once the visitor leaves the site. In particular, information about the Web visitor is not available when he or she contacts the contact center by other channels.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system that is highly personalized, that has access to existing information about individual persons, that tracks online behavior, adds that data to existing data, and uses the results proactively in interacting in many ways with the subject persons. A system such as this would provide a fuller picture of the customer's interests and behaviors no matter what channel the customer uses for the next visit to the Web site or hosting call center.